Important advances since the first comprehensive workshop conference on Alzheimer's disease, held in 1977 under the sponsorship of the National Institute on Aging, the National Institute on Mental Health and the National Institute of Neurological and Communicative Disorders and Stroke, justify a new conference on specific biological aspects of the disease. This interdisciplinary conference will cover several evolving approaches to understanding the etiology and pathogenesis of Alzheimer's disease. The areas of concern are: 1) alterations in specific neurotransmitter systems and specific neurons, 2) alterations in fibrous proteins, 3) physiological changes as monitored by Positron Emission Tomography, 4) genetic and chromosomal changes and relationship to Down's syndrome, 5) current work on latent slow-acting viruses. A special function of the conference at the Banbury conference center of Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory will be to focus the attention of geneticists, virologists and molecular biologists on problems now approachable whose solution may provide insight into the nature of Alzheimer's disease. Rapid dissemination of findings from the conference is to be achieved through publication, approximately four months after the conference, of a volume containing extended abstracts and a conference summary (whose preparation will be speeded in turn by tape-recording and transcription of the conference sessions within two weeks of the conference). The conference on Alzheimer's disease is the second of two small meetings at Banbury Center designed to follow up points raised during the International Symposium on Aging and Cancer, held in Washington, D.C., in September 1980.